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Page 177
If it comes to hanging or maiming, I will know of it and I will do you the courtesy to tell you what is decided, so that you can speak for the man, if you believe he deserves to be spoken for. As for yourself, I suppose you are a prisoner, not a guest, but you have given your parole not to try to escape. I cannot see why you should want to escape. I assure you I have no intention of selling you to the king. You have nowhere else to go. Thus, I can see no reason to confine you or to waste my men's time by setting a guard upon you."
"But how can I make restitution, then? I have nothing!"
"You have a strong body and, I believe, a clean nature. I have some profit already," Alinor smiled sardonically, "simply in knowing that hiding you from the king will make him uneasy. The rest, if Lord Ian agrees and if you can convince us of your sincere desire to be loyal to us, I will take out of you in service. A knight is paid a shilling a day. Adding the cost of horse and armor, which I must furnish to you since yours is gone, it will take you some few years to clear your debt, but" Alinor broke off and began to laugh again. One would think from Sir Guy's expression that she was proposing immediate entry into heaven without the intervention of death, instead of many years of hard service. She waved the young man away before he embarrassed her by too great gratitude or himself by bursting into tears. If he was what he seemed, she had made a good bargain in exchange for a few cows and a few loads of grain.

At almost the same time that Alinor opened the gateway to Sir Guy's notion of heaven, King John was considering her entrance into hell on earth. On the previous night, he had not summoned his current mistress among his wife's ladies to his bed. He had sent Fulk de Cantelu and Henry of Cornhill into the town to procure three

 
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